EuroSavanthttp://www.eurosavant.com
Commentary on the European non-English-language pressMon, 13 Nov 2017 15:41:44 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1Leave ISIL Out of This!http://www.eurosavant.com/2017/11/13/leave-isil-out-of-this/
Mon, 13 Nov 2017 15:41:44 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14753Remember back at the end of July when a young guy pulled out a knife in a supermarket in a residential suburb of Hamburg (Germany) and started stabbing people? He killed one person there and wounded five, then wounded another as he tried to flee the scene.

Naturally, as he jabbed he repeatedly cried out that old standard “Allahu Akbar” – Of course! Of course! – and it should neither be a surprise that he was a refugee in Germany, housed in a local Hamburg refugee center: he had been refused asylum, was supposed to be deported, but was enjoying a bureaucratic delay because he had never shown any “papers” specifying where he came from. (He’s Palestinian, although born in the UAE.)

Well, he has succeeded in avoiding deportation, but only in favor of a German jail. (Of course, he succeeded far more in souring the German electorate’s mood towards refugees generally.) Now he will go to trial, charged with one count of murder and six counts of attempted murder.

Back then after his arrest, he had a lot to say to the police. His aim had been to become a “martyr,” but only after first killing as many “Christians and young people” as possible. He had meant his act as a “contribution to a worldwide jihad,” and ISIL issued a statement shortly afterwards taking credit for his attack.

Nonetheless, he is not being charged with terrorism. Investigators could find no actual connection on his part with ISIL or any other terrorist group, no matter how much the perpetrator himself and ISIL tried to talk up such a connection after-the-fact. It seems clear that he was nothing more than a very confused young man, a lone-wolf “inspired” by ISIL but nothing more.

Hamburg law-enforcement, after proper investigation, are intelligent enough to realize that. Contrast that with, for example, the New York City Halloween truck-killer. (What? Forgot about him already?) Send him to Guantanamo (said President Trump)! ISIL also claimed credit for that attack and – no matter how tenuous the actual links between that killer and ISIL seemed to be – their credibility (ironically enough) was good enough for US authorities: He’s a terrorist! Or consider the 2015 San Bernardino shootings: they’re Muslim, ISIL takes the credit, so they’re terrorists – when acceding to that self-description in fact gives them more sinister credit than they deserve, not to mention potentially subjecting them to further criminal charges which may not actually be warranted.

In the Age of Trump the US is no sort of calm, reflective country, so that we should not expect anytime soon rational proceeding in such extreme public criminal matters of the sort the Hamburg authorities have displayed here. But that’s a shame.

]]>Secret Police Skeletonshttp://www.eurosavant.com/2017/11/09/secret-police-skeletons/
Thu, 09 Nov 2017 14:20:21 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14742By now it’s reached the cliché-stage to call the new presumptive Czech Republic prime minister, Andrej Babiš, the “Czech Donald Trump.” Sadly, people like to do so – among other, obvious, reasons – because the comparison is so true. The main aspect here is that Babiš is also rather rich, said to be the second-richest person in the country, so that a great part of his political appeal undoubtedly is voters’ confidence that someone who has been so successful in his personal financial life must be able to perform in the same way for the country.

Oh, and he also does not hold back when it comes to advancing those private financial interests using his public powers; we know that from his record as Treasury Minister in the outgoing government.

But now the leading Czech business newspapere, Hospodářské noviny, brings up another parallel people may have started to forget: Babiš’ unsavory pre-Revolution past.

“Agent Bureš”: That was said to be Babiš’ code-name in filed reports about his alleged collaboration with the StB, the Czechoslovak secret police back in the bad old Communist days, dating from when he was reported to have sat down as a 28-year-old in 1982 at a specific cafe in downtown Bratislava to sign a collaboration agreement. Now, Babiš’ own father was a high-ranking Czechoslovak Communist official, in fact a diplomat, meaning that young Babiš mostly lived and was educated abroad. Naturally, he then grabbed an excellent regime job as a young adult, working for the Slovak international trade company and even representing it for a while in Morocco.

So working secretly for the regime in some way was pretty much baked-in for Andrej Babiš. The real question is: How enthusiastically?

It won’t surprise you that it is basically that question around which a number of Slovak court cases have raged, as Babiš has tried to clear his name. Three times a court has declared that the evidence indicated he hadn’t been such a great worker for the Communist regime – yet that “evidence” was pretty much only the testimony of people within the StB who knew him and wanted to vouch for him. Only three weeks ago, no less than the Slovak Constitutional (i.e. “Supreme”) Court threw out those previous judgments, ruling – not unreasonably – that the doubtful credibility of his StB comrades was not enough of a solid basis for them.

Now, in addition to the daunting task of forming a minority government that can win the required confidence-vote from the Czech parliament, Babiš has the added task of proceding yet again in court to try to clear his name. Please note, again, that we’re talking here about Slovak courts, because he lived/worked in Slovakia at the time and it is the Slovak secret-police archives which contain the incriminating material about his past.

Including, as this HN piece points out, twelve separate reports on his collaboration activities, some of which praise Bureš as “one of our most reliable agents” . . .

Does It Even Matter?

The more astute among you will now be saying to yourselves, “Aha, what a coincidence that the Constitutional Court issued its ruling just now, right after Babiš’ party “won” the latest Czech elections to make him the presumptive new Prime Minister! And yes, unfortunately in this part of the world the political is often to be found not very far away from matters of criminal justice.

Those among you even more in-the-know (to the point, frankly, where it may not be much value-added to you reading me on Czech happenings) will recall that Babiš was already in trouble in the run-up to the election about a completely unrelated matter (and not mentioned in this HN piece), namely the “Swan’s Nest” affair in which it strongly appears that he misappropriated EU money towards the cause of private resort-property he owns in the Czech countryside. There was even a warrant out for Babiš’ arrest about this as everyone was campaigning for the election (see what I mean?).

Of course, his ANO party came in first nonetheless. If he does become PM (and remember that few other parties seem to want to work with him to form a coalition government), then the Swan’s Nest accusations – no matter how legitimate – are likely to die an obscure death (although I wonder how he’ll be able to look fellow EU leaders straight in the face). On the other hand, note that all the court action and archives happening in Slovakia mean that he may not have any particular advantage when it comes to dealing with that.

Even if he can’t deal with that, in the end, it’s likely not to matter. After all, there have long been plenty of worrisome indications about his StB past, no matter how Slovak courts may have ruled. Not to mention Swan’s Nest. But much of the Czech electorate didn’t seem to care.* And so the country is likely stuck with this rich guy, of a questionable background, in it’s most powerful position for at least the next electoral cycle. Like everyone says: the Czech Trump.

* I am pleased to report at least that there are no indications in Babiš’ past of any sort of uncivil behavior towards women!

]]>Laughing on Spain’s Precipicehttp://www.eurosavant.com/2017/09/15/laughing-on-spains-precipice/
Fri, 15 Sep 2017 13:41:01 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14727Here at EuroSavant we’re always trying to expand the breadth of European non-English-language sources we regularly consult: both through learning new languages (a slow process; also one sometimes even prone to reversal) and simply through finding fresh news-sources we hadn’t been aware of before.

How long ago was it that I added the Twitter-feed of El Mundo Today to my “following”-list? I can’t remember, but that media-outlet seemed legit at the time, what with its very name a derivative of El Mundo, one of Spain’s “newspapers of record,” and with the ambitious slogan La actualidad del mañana (“Tomorrow’s news”) making up its Twitter-bio.

They also seemed to have a knack for coming up with interesting scoops, or at least so I thought recently when I saw one of their tweets yesterday:

“A Catalan Terminator comes from the Future to appear in Parliament intending to dissuade Puigdemont.” That would be Carles Puigdemont, let’s call him “governor” of the want-away Spanish (let’s call it) province of Catalonia, and so point-man for the referendum on independence from Spain which officials of that province intend to hold on October 1, despite opposition from the central government.

I know, I know . . . you, honored reader, no doubt have already seen through this, but I did not at the time. Maybe it was the otherwise reasonable, ordinary-looking picture of a parliament-like assembly in session, with some sort of machinery at the front, that made me think this was an ordinary news-item. In any case, it wasn’t until today that I started looking into the piece more closely, clicking through to read the article. The lede (FYI: some parts of the original are in Catalan):

A Catalan Terminator T-800 coming back from the future appeared this morning in the Parliament of Catalonia and, fixing its red eyes on the face of Carles Puigdemont, got on its knees to beg the Governor to desist with his commitment of staging an illegal referendum on 1 October because “the future of an independent Catalonia is chaos and destruction outside of Europe and outside of the Law.”

Right. If that did not make clear what is really going on here, there were the various links to other articles arrayed below that “Terminator” text, such as:

Whether as a whole or just from any of those parts, any reasonable reader cannot take such “news reports” seriously; even to me, as gullible as I can be, it becomes clear that this is no straight-up news operation. No, this is some sort of satirical site.

But there is still more to this. For one thing, the material doesn’t seem particularly . . . you know . . . funny! Perhaps the language-barrier is to blame?

This is a serious thing, people, even though it still feels like it is a bit under-the-radar when it comes to the news-consciousness of most people living outside of Spain. A major province/community in Spain is going hell-bent to have an independence referendum in a few weeks’ time, after which (assuming a “Yes” win) it will likely similarly push hard for actual independence; meanwhile, the Central State is resorting to an escalating series of measures to beat down that referendum so it cannot happen.

The inevitable question arises: Could things turn violent? One would think not, for a number of reasons including 1) Spain is a long-time EU member-state, and violence – even civil violence – is just not done within the EU, that’s one reason it exists, and if there is violence Spain’s fellow member-states will do something about it; and 2) The Spanish already have a very sad example of civil violence of their own to refer to, and that is of course their Civil War (1936-1939) and the dreary, repressive Fascist Franco regime that issued from that.

Surely the good people at El Mundo Today realize full well what serious things are at stake with the proposed Catalan independence referendum. It seems the contribution they best see fit to make to try to ward off the worst-case is their humor – as strained and far-fetched as that sometimes may seem, at least in English-speaking eyes.

And avoid it they do: The tweet-text below the picture goes on to report how only 1 or 2 babies afflicted with that genetic irregularity are born in Iceland each year.

Let’s have a reminder that Down Syndrome is certainly nothing anyone would want to see in their new infant; from Wikipedia:

Those with Down syndrome nearly always have physical and intellectual disabilities. As adults, their mental abilities are typically similar to those of an 8- or 9-year-old. They also typically have poor immune function and generally reach developmental milestones at a later age. They have an increased risk of a number of other health problems, including congenital heart defect, epilepsy, leukemia, thyroid diseases, and mental disorders, among others.

Further, and to be blunt, people with Down Syndrome have a certain common look: “a small chin, slanted eyes . . . a small mouth,” etc. Not something you like to see; and it was this appearance that led the doctor who originally described the syndrome back in 1862, John Langdon Down, to initially call those suffering from it “mongoloid” as he felt they resembled the so-called Mongoloid race in Asia. (These days, use of that term is strongly discouraged; I only have it in this post’s headline because I needed something short and with brutal shock-value.)

Icelandic babies, then, are to a remarkable degree spared such anguish* – innocents spared a stunted (and likely shortened) life assigned purely due to the cruel vagaries of chance. Perhaps even more significantly, Icelandic parents as well are spared what are certainly the much greater – and longer – demands on them, both financially and emotionally, to support their child in living as happy a life as he or she can.

Fantastic! Then again, perhaps that this comes out of Iceland is the least surprising thing. Many are aware how people there share a unique common genome-set, due to the fact that almost all of them are descendants of a limited group of Viking explorers who first settled the North Atlantic island starting towards the end of the ninth century A.D. (OK, and maybe also of the Irish slaves they brought there.) This remarkable fact once led Wired magazine to call Iceland “the world’s greatest genetic laboratory,” due to the remarkable genetics research that has been carried there in recent years, taking advantage of that national genetic homogeneity.

Sorry: No Miracle-Cure

Click on La Repubblica’s tweet to go on to the underlying article, however, and you will find your hopes dashed. Iceland, it turns out, avoids Down Syndrome in its children in the most direct, old-fashioned way.

NO, we are certainly NOT facing some genetic change confined to this country, Iceland, the first on European soil, in which the births of babies with Down Syndrome would seem to be almost entirely absent. Rather, the reasons for the enormous fall in the incidence of this syndrome can be ascribed to the choice made by Icelandic parents, almost always in agreement, to subject the fetus to a pre-natal test within the first weeks of pregnancy, and to interrupt gestation in the eventuality that the screening returns positive for Down Syndrome.

Ha – “interrupt gestation”(IT: interrompere la gestazione): what you and I would more simply call “have an abortion.” But this flowery language, this circumlocution, reflects the more remarkable fact here that you may have forgotten: This report is appearing in an Italian newspaper of widespread national circulation. Italy: a very Roman Catholic country, where women only gained the right to have an abortion in 1978, and still only within the first 90 days of pregnancy; where the still very influential Church authorities tell you you are committing a mortal sin if you even do that! La Repubblica reporter Sara Pero (female, of course) is broaching here a very taboo subject!

There’s something else. After making clear in the very first paragraph (which I quoted above) that the scarcity of Down Syndrome babies in Iceland was no miracle solution, the article goes on basically to lay out the statistics of screening and abortion of Down Syndrome-positive babies there. Those statistics demonstrate that it is indeed the high rates of screening, and then of aborting positive babies, that account for that scarcity. Icelandic women are also allowed an abortion up to four months after conception. (BTW it’s also true that ~70% of babies born on the entire island are born at Reykjavik hospital – handy for ensuring accurate numerical reports!)

But the thing that stuck out at me was the fact that the accuracy of the Down Syndrome test there was estimated at 85%; that is, that the risk of a false positive (fetus diagnosed
as having Down Syndrome, but does not really) is 15%. That 85% seems to me rather low; put another way, that 15% seems rather high for, after all, in Iceland this is truly a life-or-death test.

Let’s briefly consider the flip-side of the coin, false negatives (fetus diagnosed not to have Down Syndrome, but turns out upon birth that it does, a percentage I assume to be rather lower than the 15% false-positive rate). Well, some babies with Down Syndrome are still born each year in Iceland, one or two; these must be those false negatives.

But back to the false positives: at a 15% rate, there are certainly many, many of them each year. And these babies – perfectly normal – are aborted, almost without exception. “Massacre of the Innocents!”, you cry? You may very well be right; but, clearly, Iceland society has collectively decided that it will not put up with Down Syndrome children, has set systems in place to execute that belief – and has been “rewarded” with extraordinarily low rates of that syndrome.

It’s an ethical-philosophical stand which, if extreme, that country has nonetheless unambiguously and clearly adopted; it may well not be the same one you would choose. For me, the issue here is rather doing whatever needs to be done to come up with a more accurate screening technique. I beg pardon, but for me this dilemma finds an analog in the problem the New York Times reported on only a month ago about new-found doubts concerning behavioral testing of stray dogs turned into animal shelters. For these dogs it’s also true that, if they fail these tests – which are behavioral, not genetic, but still not anything they can “study” for – they will not leave the shelter alive.

*Well, to the extent that they ever are able to be sufficiently self-aware – a forlorn subject in its own right.

As we humans know, you actually never try to walk across the Autobahn in Germany, not unless we’re talking about a pedestrian overpass. But this momma-duck didn’t know anything about that, and apparently led her brand-new brood of ducklings onto Autobahn 3, at the spot just to the west of Cologne where it crosses Autobahn 4 coming from the west.

That brood numbered a bit more than five ducklings. We know at least “five” because, unfortunately, that was how many smashed duckling bodies were left there on the pavement, before the momma-duck and the rest of the ducklings managed to get off the highway quick and into the surrounding foliage.

The problem was that the momma-duck then reappeared at the same spot around three hours later, presumably trying to find out what had happened to her missing progeny. She was harder to drive away this time; for whatever reason, there were firefighters on the scene, but she wouldn’t let herself be caught nor be shooed away from the Autobahn – where, we can assume, the on-coming high-speed traffic was staring to make things dangerous.

So the police shut the Autobahn down! For the duck! As they tried to chase her away, which is where she went after about half an hour. (I would have loved to hear the report on the traffic bulletin broadcast by both national and the local radio stations!)

Now, this happened during the day last Wednesday, so a business day but with perhaps traffic a little less thick than usual because for many it was the tail-end of summer vacation. But the traffic was undoubtedly still substantial – this is Autobahn 3, people, the Autobahn coming out of Cologne and paralleling the Rhine southward for a while before heading eastwards to Frankfurt am Main, and beyond.

I have never heard of the Dutch authorities ever shutting down a highway due to any bird. Then again, in a couple of places there highways do have “animal” overpasses, that is, bridges built over the highway from the woods on one side to the woods on the other, for wildlife to use. These are expensive, of course, and perhaps one could argue about their actual benefits to the public versus their costs; but then again, perhaps Germany could take up this idea and add a couple of these to its infrastructure budget nonetheless. Sorry, no sort of “public service announcements” are going to be able to educate the ducks!

]]>The AWOL Czech Presidenthttp://www.eurosavant.com/2017/08/24/the-awol-czech-president/
Thu, 24 Aug 2017 09:38:39 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14685This week started off with a commemorative occasion of note, at least if you live in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. Monday, 21 August, marked the 49th anniversary of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the broad-based Communist reform movement underway there known collectively as the Prague Spring.

OK, the 50th anniversary next year will presumably be a much bigger deal. But for remembering officially the event in those peoples’ political history which, in its long-standing trauma, probably corresponds to the 9/11 attacks in the US, at the least, every year’s 21 August is surely worth some official attention. But not from the Czech Republic’s President, Miloš Zeman, at least not this year: there was nothing from the Presidential Palace, no attendance at any ceremony, no statement.

Naturally, then, the State Radio’s news channel, Radiožurnál, wanted to find out how come. Gaining no access to Zeman himself (perhaps somewhat understandably), they turned to his official spokesman, Jiří Ovčáček.

The interview was brief, three questions, amounting to “Did the President express anything in relation to the 49th anniversary of the Occupation, and does he intend to do so going forward?” What it yielded was no so much obfuscatory as, frankly, outrageous. The President had already expressed himself on that subject, Ovčáček maintained, and that at least 47 years ago when he made it clear he was against the invasion and paid for his opinion by losing his job. And then check this:

In other words, the President bravely expressed himself during that period when it was no cheap thing to do so, [whereas] today the sort of people who opine on this sad anniversary are those who during Normalization [the period following the ’68 invasion] were satisfied with digging in to the gravy-train [CZ: chrochtali u koryta].

Now, Zeman is getting old, perhaps he momentarily forgot that he is, after all, President of the country.

And then: “Isn’t he going to return to the subject at future anniversaries?” “The President puts forth his views on this almost every day, when he speaks of how the Czech Republic must remain a sovereign nation” and bla bla bla . . .

It’s as if Zeman has no further obligation to have anything to do with that Warsaw Pact “brotherly assistance” simply because of how he is alleged to have behaved in the years immediately afterwards. Let’s take a quick look at what that behavior actually was; for this, I go to his page in the Czech Wikipedia. I know, the particular nature of that source is such that you never can discount someone with a political point to prove distorting what you find there, but still, there’s some interesting material.

Perusing the Files

Spokesman Ovčáček in his answers claimed Zeman was fired no less than three times for his opposition to the ’68 Invasion. The Wikipedia page – as I say, FWIW – has no explicit mention of any of these; rather, it says Zeman joined the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1968 (when he was 23) and then was expelled in 1970 for his anti-Invasion views. Was he actually a Communist Party employee during that period? The article does not say, although it hints he was staying on then as some sort of instructor at the Prague Economics University, from where he had just graduated.

After experiencing that, it seems Zeman went on, up through 1989, to occupy a series of jobs all having to do with running economic models. Interestingly, the first such, lasting until 1984, was at Sportpropag, a company normally having to do with athletics and physical fitness for the masses – but, apparently, under the Communist system such a firm could also have its own department devoted to complex economic models. The article also gives a few details (too few) about some sort of cooperation, with the economics analytical sense, for the State Security department in the early 1980s. Then in August 1989, before the Velvet Revolution happened, Zeman dared to have published an article he had been nursing for years which criticized the Communist economic system. He was promptly fired from his position at another company doing economic models – but, of course, three months later the entire world in that part of Europe turned completely upside-down.

So those are the facts as we are able to gather quickly from Wikipedia. Oh, and is something else, courtesy of Google Scholar: There’s actually a book out there called Policy Analysis in the Czech Republic, which briefly mentions Zeman and Sportpropag, and says a couple of interesting things:

Not without reason, this program [the State Economic Research Programme, begun in the 1980s and the umbrella organization for the sort of economic bureaus in which Zeman worked] was said to provide a livelihood to many politically suspected intellectuals.

Indeed, another famous post-Revolution Czech politician, Václav Klaus, also inhabited this economic-research world during the Communist era. And this, in a footnote:

This department [Zeman’s own “Department of Comprehensive Modelling” within Sportpropag] was disbanded in the spring of 1984, for political reasons. It had published an anthology on the methodology of social sciences, which was openly critical of the condition and state of the pro-regime Czechoslovak science [sic].

OK then, it was an earlier bit of published dissent which seems to have led to his job-switch around 1984. In some sense, then, Zeman did refuse – on occasion – to just play along with the authorities and paid for that in some way. Most Czechoslovak citizens, truly, hardly went that far – they just dug in to the gravy-train, so to speak. But a few did do much more.

Again, though, Miloš Zeman is the Czech President – and he is running for re-election in the direct election for the post that will occur sometime later this year (or early in 2018).

In view of this (minor) controversy, it is timely that a new trove of personal photos of the chaos in Prague during that 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion, taken by a visiting Polish geologist, have just surfaced, and you can see them here.

Let me also remind you that it was a reporter from Czech State Radio (Český rozhlas) who question the President’s spokesman about his strange behavior; there is now very good reason to doubt that the same would ever happen in what are supposed to be the Czech Republic’s brother-states in Central Europe, namely Poland and Hungary.

Finally, let me add another bit picked up from Zeman’s Czech Wikipedia article, from the section titled “State of Health and Diet”: Zeman reportedly drinks daily six bottles of wine and three “drams” of hard alcohol, in addition to being a heavy smoker. He is a diabetic – and he is also now almost 73 years old. But, again, there was no attempt by his spokesman to excuse on the basis of any health problems his absence from last Monday’s commemorative ceremonies.

]]>“Those Lazy [Black] Immigrants!”http://www.eurosavant.com/2017/08/22/those-lazy-black-immigrants/
Tue, 22 Aug 2017 17:21:20 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14676Italian journalist Luca Bottura spotted these guys hanging out last Friday in a picture on his Twitter-feed, and just had to sound the alarm:

Basically: “Here’s your government money, these guys go shopping for Prada with their €35! Share this if you are as angry as I am!” And that one-word comment up top: “Shame!”

The key element here was the €35 part, this is the daily money the Italian government provides refugees to survive on while their individual asylum cases are being processed. Meanwhile: what a good life, eh? Sitting around with their new Prada clothes, smilin’, jivin’ – all on the Italian taxpayer’s dime!

Not really, though. Surely most of you recognized these guys, namely the movie star Samuel L. Jackson and the LA Lakers basketball legend Magic Johnson. Lately they’ve been on vacation together in Italy (Capri, Sorrento, that sort of thing) along with their families and other friends. This tweet from Magic Johnson’s own feed shows what was really going on:

How could Bottura get things so wrong? He didn’t; he’s a journalist and columnist for the Corriere della Sera newspaper (and other media outlets, including radio), but he’s mainly known as a satirist, and here he was trying something out, seeing how far he could push the widespread prejudice and resentment against refugees among the Italian population, to see who took the bait.

Indeed, his tweet was widely spread, also through Facebook, and attracted a good bit of racist comment. The biggest fish Bottura caught was Nina Morić, a Croatian model who lives in and is relatively well-known in Italy; once the truth about these gentlemen was out, Ms. Morić then claimed that her own unseemly reaction to Bottura’s tweet was her just playing around as well, to fool all the rubes.

That truth was out as of last Sunday, two days after he had set things going, and Bottura also shared some interesting statistics:

The meme was shared thousands of times. Forty percent grasped the provocation, thirty percent were angry about it, twenty percent found it to be racist and scolded me for not recognizing Samuel L. Jackson and Magic Johnson. Ten percent passed it on with no comment.

Yes, that “forty percent” part is confusing; I interpret that forty percent gave indications that they understood the surface meaning of the incident, i.e. that something “wrong” was being depicted, but did not comment on it further. But you see, I had to translate Bottura’s report at second-hand, from the Dutch that had been translated from the Italian, since a write-up in the Flemish newspaper De Morgen was my main source and how I found out about this in the first place. Otherwise, reports are only starting to creep onto the edges of the EN-language press, such as Mashable (with more detail on the source of that government money) and . . . er . . . the Quebec Times.

]]>Poisoned Mass Shell-Gamehttp://www.eurosavant.com/2017/08/16/poisoned-mass-shell-game/
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 14:29:59 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14657As I mentioned previously on my Twitter time-line, yesterday was a Catholic holiday: Ferragosto in Italy (end-of-summer, woe betide whoever has to work that day, etc.), but more generally the holiday which celebrates the Assumption of Mary into Heaven.

Turns out, in the Ardennes town of Malmédy in Belgium each August 15 is marked by a special ceremony in which a huge public omelet is cooked in one of the main squares, la Place de Rome, and then cut up and handed out for consumption by whoever is present at the time.

Hold on, though: if you have been keeping up with current European affairs (certainly on this weblog), there should be alarm-bells ringing. Fipronil! What about that? The egg-poisoning scandal that has by now spread from its origins in Netherlands/Belgium to infect most other EU member-states as well as other countries who are the EU’s agricultural customers.

But no, tradition demanded that, once again in mid-August, a huge cooking-pan be set up in Rome Square, ready to process thousands of eggs (as well as 25 kilos of grease, etc.), after volunteers had first had a cracking time that morning extracting their innards. Talk about defying Fate, about sheltering within the Mother of God’s protection!

At least there was one significant difference this time: the mega-omelet was made up of around 6,500 eggs, rather than the ~10,000 that have usually been used up in previous years. Was that a concession to fipronil worries? No, the article claims; rather, the weather meant that fewer people than usual could be bothered to make the trek to Malmédy for the occasion.

Admittedly, yesterday was indeed marked by a line of violent, mid-day thunderstorms that proceeded from France through the southern part of the Benelux and then hit the western part of Germany with particular force. And anyway, think about it: if they were taking the fipronil threat at all seriously, what sort of half-assed measure would it be to go ahead with cooking the omelet, but with only 65% of the usual amount of eggs?

No, egged on as they were by whatever crowd that converged on the square, the assembled chefs – clothed in the customary white jackets and toques blanches – went right ahead as soon as all ingredients were ready, and were serving it out along with a piece of French bread on plastic plates by 1:20 PM. All for free, garnished with plenty of commentary about how jolly and convivial everything was (as you can see/hear in the accompanying video if you click through, and if you can understand French). You also learn from that how all eggs were sourced from the most local producers possible, from the neighbors, practically – so they couldn’t possibly have anything to do with fipronil, could they?

We will see. Remember as well that so far EU and national authorities have maintained that, even if people eat affected eggs, it is unlikely that anyone would be exposed to enough fipronil to really get sick. But that’s what they would say, of course; further, it’s clear that any effects appear over time, not at once.

Anyway, it’s hard to think of a better mass experiment about the risks of exposure to fipronil, under present circumstances when European authorities are still struggling to gain control over the emergency, than what we saw yesterday in Malmédy. Now to just sit back and wait; Hail Mary, full of grace . . .

]]>Trump’s Military Flunky?http://www.eurosavant.com/2017/08/16/trumps-military-flunky/
Wed, 16 Aug 2017 12:54:26 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14652This week German Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel returned from her three-week vacation in the Italian mountains. Her absence meant she had to miss the famed “Diesel Summit” on 2 August with all of the country’s auto manufacturers, but at least campaigning towards nationwide election happening next 24 September was set to a low simmer while she was away.

She returned still enjoying a healthy lead in the polls over her nearest competitor, former EU Parliament President Martin Schulz. Schulz represents the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, the country’s next-biggest political party after Merkel’s CDU, but also the one that is in the current government with her, as they formed a “Grand Coalition” together after the last election in 2013. That’s always an uncomfortable arrangement – having to cooperate within a government even as your colleagues from the other main party are your main election-rivals – and I’m sure both sides are looking forward to seeing it end after this next election.

From Germany’s northern neighbor, the Danish newspaper Politiken has identified something a little strange in the German campaign:

“Merkel wants to increase NATO funding.” “What’s so strange about that?” you might ask. After all, it’s well-known that Germany’s defense budget has long stood below the 2% of GDP that is prescribed (by 2024) for all NATO member-states; currently the figure is around 1.26%. It’s a rich country, and the economy (including tax-receipts) is now doing very well; indeed, it is the leading country on the European continent, at least politically and financially. No excuse, it would seem, not to hit that funding target.

But here you might forget who has been loudly demanding that Germany raise its defense-spending*: Donald Trump. And, already, Donald Trump is someone you don’t want to be associated with in the eyes of the German electorate.

Well, when you’re behind in the polls you’ll go with anything halfway-plausible that you can think of, right? Sure enough, Schulz and other leading SPD officials are now attacking Merkel for her stated intention to raise the country’s military spending, should she be re-confirmed in office (for the third time in a row) in the election. This sort of thing even comes from Germany’s current Foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel (SPD):

For me, this means that Germany is subordinating itself to the American President. Up until recently I never believed that this was possible.

See what I mean about the awkwardness of Grand Coalitions? This is the person with whom Merkel still has to work closely – for another few weeks, at least – to formulate and carry out the country’s foreign policy.

Now admittedly, the military has always been a sore point in German politics, say, in the past seven decades or so. For example, it took the longest time even to overturn the law that once forbade German armed forces from being deployed outside the country. And we all know why that is, namely due to the rather unbridled use Germany made of its military some seventy-to-eighty years ago.

Still, it’s striking how Trump represents the Kiss of Death in Germany, even when it comes to policies for which you would think there would be general agreement. Here’s an idea: The German auto industry’s lobbying arm should try its best, at whatever cost, to get Trump to start singing the praises of electrically powered cars!

A final note: All of this could become academic. For the precise German election day is Sunday, 24 September, or the day after a widely accepted Internet meme claims the world will come to an end.

*Actually, in most of his statements Trump has made it sound like NATO members are required to pay 2% of their GDP to the US Treasury in exchange for defensive cover from the US military. It actually doesn’t work like that.

]]>Making Her Name in the Westhttp://www.eurosavant.com/2017/08/08/making-her-name-in-the-west/
Tue, 08 Aug 2017 14:15:30 +0000http://www.eurosavant.com/?p=14635A surprising summer TV ratings hit, in many countries, was the Women’s Football European Championship Tournament, just concluded this past Sunday and held at various stadiums in the Netherlands starting on 16 July.

As with all such tournaments, things only start to get really serious when it comes to the knock-out rounds, here the quarter-finals which were held on the weekend of 29-30 July. I tuned in then to the Germany-vs.-Denmark game, and was taken by surprise at the beginning when the stadium band played the Danish national anthem and – as is standard – the TV camera panned the line of starting Denmark players. One of them was definitely not like the others: not fair-skinned and blonde or standard brunette, but quite dark-skinned and dark-haired indeed. That was number 9, Nadia Nadim (also nothing near the typical Danish first or last name), who it turned out played as one of the forward strikers within Denmark’s 4-4-2 system.

Nadim actually scored, with a header, the goal that brought Denmark back to 1-1 against the Germans (cancelling out their goalkeeper’s terrible mistake that had allowed in a long-range strike for the Germans’ one goal), in a game the Danes would go on to win 2-1, a spectacular upset against the German women’s team that had won the last six such tournaments. She also scored Denmark’s first goal – an unstoppable penalty-kick – in the final against the Netherlands that the Danish team ultimately lost 2-4. And throughout the tournament (at least the games I watched) she was a dynamo of energy up there at the front of the Danish line.

But the equally interesting thing here is the back-story. Where is this lady from? This piece from The Local.dk explains things well enough, in English: She was born in Herat, Afghanistan, to a father who was an officer in the Afghan Army and was executed by the Taliban in 2000, whereupon she fled with her mother and siblings to Europe, to Denmark. (I believe hearing during a game broadcast that the original plan was actually to carry on to go live in England.)

Now 29 years old, she is starting striker for the Denmark women’s national team, as well as for the Portland Thorns in the (American) National Women’s Soccer League. But that’s not all: she ultimately will become a doctor, as she is also studying in Denmark towards her medical degree. (For those not in the know, that requires abilities in math and science.) PLUS, as this piece from the website of a Danish sports TV channel puts it, she speaks seven languages (Danish, English, German, French, Farsi, Urdu and Hindi) and can be interviewed in at least the first three listed. (Nadia quote from that sports-site piece: “I’m quite bright. You would hardly believe it – surprise!”)

Inevitably, then, she embodies themes that go far beyond the mere persona of Nadia Nadim herself, in several directions. There is the elevation of international women’s football in the general public interest that this particular tournament has helped achieve, with the related and important aspect that now, for once, girls interested in playing football finally have heroes there performing on TV to which they can relate, of their same gender. Except that these particular feats, of course, were pretty much achieved collectively by all the women players participating in that Euros tournament.

For Nadim, in addition, there is the refugee aspect, the fact that she certainly does not “look” very Danish – and indeed only became a citizen when she was 12-13 years old. I daresay, however, that you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone calling for her to be thrown out of the country, even among Denmark’s most rabid anti-foreigner rabble (all tattoos, piercings and Viking-horns). Denmark has certainly had a problem within the context of the Europe-wide refugee crisis that exploded in mid-2015, and it’s fair to say the country has mainly tried to keep its doors closed; it’s anti-foreigner party, the Danish People’s Party, has had strong influence on each government since the turn of the century. In Germany, similar anti-foreigner sentiment has to some degree been tamped down through nation-wide delight at the success of the men’s football team, which features stars of Turkish, Tunisian, Ghanaian lineage and the like. Might the same thing happen in Denmark via Nadia Nadim?

Yet I feel there is an even greater point to be made here, by looking back to where she originally came from. My thoughts were turned in this direction when I recently came across this piece from De Volkskrant:

“In some parts of Afghanistan women aren’t even referred to by name.” First paragraph of the article:

Women in Afghanistan are often indicated as “mother,” “daughter,” “wife” or “grandma.” In some parts of the land the name is not even denoted on birth-certificates, and on the marriage license only the name of the groom and the father of the bride are to be read. It even happens that the name of a woman who has died is not put on her gravestone, but she is rather referred to as “wife of.” Certainly within conservative circles, it is just not done to use a woman’s name within the family environment.

That is what Nadia Nadim escaped when she fled with her family. Does anyone think she would have played football (there is no Afghan national women’s football team), learned seven languages, become a doctor had she stayed in Afghanistan? We all know that the chances are overwhelming that she would have been kept illiterate and barefoot, restricted her whole life long to the usual roles of child-bearer and household servant. For we know that one of the things the Taliban are quite serious about is that girls are not to be educated – just ask Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala. (Admittedly, Malala herself is Pakistani, but the point still applies. By the way, that sort of outside-imposed upholding of women’s rights still does not justify the continued presence in that country of foreign military forces, nor the trillions of dollars or many thousands of lives – native and foreign – that have been wasted there since 2001.)

It was only by escaping to the West that Nadim could develop and display her quite impressive personal potential – and only in these comparatively rich (could one say: “comparatively civilized”?) countries where the society that took her in could also benefit from her many gifts. Why are these other countries so poor? Admittedly, it is a complicated question, which certainly involves somewhat of a history of colonial exploitation. But Nadia Nadim shows that an important reason they are still poor is their unwillingness to allow women to contribute to society in all the ways that they can; and this has to be specified as a very grave problem centered around a certain religion, namely Islam.

P.S.: For those interested in hearing her speak English, here is an interview she did in Oregon as a Portland Thorns player. (When I have time, I’ll see if I can embed that here in this post – thanks for making it so difficult, WordPress.)

Also: It seems she mostly tweets in English, for whatever reason. Sure, that reason may be “because that’s not really her account” (it’s not verified), but take a look, it has pictures you imagine only she and her team-mates had access to, and the like.